All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [191]
I was suffocating, and I had to snap myself out of it.
It doesn’t take Jung to figure out what the vision meant. One is born into it—the water and the cave. The structural factors that conspire against our survival press down on us and box us in. In Congo, the opportunity—the ceiling—is low: corrupt government, failed institutions, an army that harms rather than protects, armed militias wantonly roving, no infrastructure, no public works, low educational and health outcomes, stifling poverty, family and cultural systems destroyed. And the ability to change it is confined to the desperate struggle to actually stay alive, to keep one’s head barely above water.
There was a reception at the home of the fabulous U.S. ambassador, Bill Garvelink, a former executive at USAID and an expert in complex emergencies and disaster assistance. Bill and his wife, Linda, were wonderfully gracious; they even had a piece of cake and a candle to celebrate Papa Jack’s birthday. They made me feel at home, reminding me that their house was supported by my tax dollars, so I believed them. After playing tennis with Bill, I stole a moment in the yard lit by oil torches, walking in the soft, barefoot-worthy grass, with the call of frogs and insects wafting through the lush Congolese air. The great river was mere feet away; I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it moving through the night. Africa. Wow. I’ll never be over it.
After the introductions and speeches ended, I sat down with the ambassador to hear his take on the condition of the country. In particular, he described the critical importance of the $300 million a year the United States government spends in Congo (a figure that was recently cut by a third). We talked at length about the depth of nothingness here, the utter lack of everything. USAID buys pens and paper for ministerial offices, supplies some books and computers for them and the university. Otherwise, the students and teachers share books, and only from time to time do they have access to a Xerox machine to make copies to spread around. He said all the natural wealth, which is vast, leaves this country, either illegally via permeable borders into the surrounding countries (including Rwanda, which President Kagame and I bicker about—he insists Rwanda has its own minerals, identifiable through their higher quality) or through mining corporations, many of them American, which do not pay one red cent in taxes to the Congolese government. It is utterly grotesque. One of the many consequences of this is that the government’s annual budget for DRC is $3 billion, about equal to the endowment of Vanderbilt University.
I saw this paltry budget in action the next day when I met the minister of gender, family, and children, Philomène Omatuku Atshakawo Akatshi. When we arrived at the minister’s office, the staff was in a tizzy because the electricity was out. The windows were thrown open, and the street noise billowed up to where we sat. There was only one vintage computer to be seen, but the minister had spruced up her offices with electric blue drapes, a powder blue seating arrangement, and an arrangement of plastic blue flowers as a centerpiece.
Minister Philomène’s lovely floor-length Congolese dress was made out of fabric printed with women’s empowerment slogans. She is a gorgeous woman, one of those nerdy engineering types (which she is) you just know is trying to tone down her beauty with her professional demeanor. She gave me an exceedingly brilliant and articulate presentation on the status of girls and women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, I can condense the message into one sentence: The budget this year of the minister of gender is exactly $0.0 Zero. Zilch. Nil. That is the state of things here.
In talking about what needs to be done, she was equally clear. Victims of rape and sexual violence need to know how and where to receive help. The help needs to be psychosocial